You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right. -- Maya Angelou

Friday, October 5, 2007

Bookworld: Another One Bites the Dust

Publishers' Weekly reports on the latest distributor to go belly up:

“If I can avoid it, I won’t declare bankruptcy,” Ronald Ted Smith, founder of the now defunct BookWorld Companies, told PW yesterday afternoon, noting that a filing would likely tie up publishers’ inventory for years and possibly force some out of business.

To prevent that from happening to BookWorld’s 100-plus clients, Smith enabled AtlasBooks, a division of BookMasters, to gain entry to BookWorld’s former warehouse in LaVergne, Tenn. But even with returned inventory, publishers are still at risk of being forced to close. They will likely lose all their receivables, which are currently being funneled to the Florida bank that supplied a $1 million line of credit to BookWorld. The bank hired former BookWorld CFO and president Wilfrid Niquette to facilitate collection of those monies.